Tag: detention centres

The alarm on my phone rings. 5am. I feel the heaviness in my chest, aching and tender. No mind, I start my early morning ritual of mentally coaxing myself out of bed. And so it goes. “You just need to open one eye. That’s all there is to do, in this moment, right now. Just one eye, and then we can deal with the next moment.” I open one eye, and the second opens automatically with the first. What I see has me cowering back into unconsciousness. My room, my reality… The children need me today. “No… I cannot get through this day”, the heaviness and pain in my chest is overwhelming. I allow myself some moments to breathe, and to believe that if I wanted to, I could stay here today – safe in this warmth, this warmth. I start sliding back into sleep. “No. You are going to school.” I protest inwardly “I’m not needed there…”. But the voice gets firmer, “You are going to school. You have a relationship with these children, a connection that is important to both of you. They feel safe with you. Besides, the teachers need you, and you need to complete your training.” But the argument isn’t compelling enough. “Why live with this pain…” I struggle for some time, desperately grasping at something, anything that will give me the courage I need to face this day. And then, “If you don’t do something today, you will have failed.” My attention peaks. “If you don’t go to school today you will be unprofessional, unreliable. Worthless. As if they want you there anyway. You are not valuable to them. Prove yourself.” This voice I can’t ignore. I inwardly breathe a sigh of relief. We’re getting somewhere! I look at the time – it’s 5:30am. “Ok, good. We haven’t gone over today. Now all you need to do is sit up. You can sit up. You’ll be able to take the warmth with you – put your blue blanket over your shoulders…” I sit up, “that’s right. Well done…” I feel relieved, emotional, grateful. I can do it! I can do this day.

Thankfully these periods do not last – and though they take all my inner strength to get through, they are not debilitating. I am also blessed with the support I need to heal – and, crucially, I can work. Many in the UK struggle with mental health and are able to lead economically ‘productive’ lives – but many more coming from a range of situations need financial support. Indeed 5.1 million ‘working age’ individuals were benefit claimants in August 2014, yet the government has cut close to £20 billion from projected welfare spending in the last five years and Conservatives are considering plans to cut a further £12 billion by 2018 in order to reduce the nation’s economic deficit. Let’s be under no illusions: according to the parties who would slash these benefits, those who do not contribute productively to society are a burden. This stance is reinforced by a media and political narrative which is vicious and punishing; those on benefits are chided and threatened lest they fail to declare all their earnings. And yet, corporations such as Google, Facebook, Starbucks and Amazon reportedly paid a meager £30million in taxes over the last four years despite UK sales of more than £3.1bn. What justice is this?

A paradigm that would have us stigmatised and divided is a paradigm to be unpacked. When we are left having to justify why we are worthy of security and abundance, we have bought the lie that our lives are not inherently valuable. And why is that? If money buys our basic human needs, money buys life. One must earn a living, and the right to live fulfilled. Food banks, depression, addiction, homelessness, starvation, economic slavery, suffering, stigmatisation, discrimination, criminalisation, shame, poverty, exhaustion, oppression, abuse and death are all possible fates for those of us unable to comply by this model. A dear friend and brilliant writer spells it out in her post The Human Cost of Demonisation: “I find I have internalised the slurs; there’s an insidious little Voice of the Daily Mail in my head, chastising me if I am up later than 8am, constantly sneering how worthless and parasitic I am.” And so, she must prove herself worthy.

These people are classed as unproductive, but what exactly are ‘unproductive bodies’? Unproductive bodies are seen to have no ‘economic value’. They are seen to contribute little or nothing to GDP, and to take from or even be a burden on the nation’s purse. They are often lumped into abject categories: addicts, benefit claimants, the disabled, the elderly, the homeless, travellers, ‘criminals’, ‘immigrants’, those seen to be overweight, those suffering from mental health issues, childbearing and menstruating women… Categories that are, amongst others, the most guilty of ‘unproductivity’. Unproductive bodies often share various characteristics: they are lazy, hysterical, undisciplined, scrounging, dirty, weak, difficult, burdensome, dangerous, psychotic or in some way defective. They need to be kept away in prisons, hospitals, detention centers, and undermined by stigma to remind us all of our place: if we fail as economically productive members of society, we fall from grace. And we fall hard.

Productive bodies, on the other hand, contribute to GDP and are therefore economically viable and valuable. These bodies are declared successful, worthy and glorified in cultural myths such as the American Dream or the UK’s austerity-backed Big Society – the productive body is your shining ticket to personal financial security, fulfilment and happiness. If we look deeper at what the logic of the productive body implies, however, we uncover the more horrifying trends of political thinking from the turn of the 20th century. Eugenicist Margaret Sanger wrote in 1922: “… the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.” The judgement of individuals as defective is a judgement of human life as less than, as unworthy, and ultimately becomes a question of life and death.

Examples of this can be found bursting forth from behind the veil of rhetoric and political propaganda. The wider reaches of our thinking about productive bodies are serious, murderous and entirely real. Hundreds if not thousands of vulnerable people have died being declared fit for work by Atos’s Work Capability Assessments after they were introduced in 2008; documented accounts explain individuals starving to death when their benefits were removed. Others committed suicide when faced with the stress of being officially declared ‘fit for work’, despite suffering from severe and debilitating mental health issues. Still more died of health related issues after being forced back into the workplace despite not being well enough to handle the pressure. Last year 3,500 more vulnerable people died in the Mediterranean seeking asylum from conflict & repression in the Middle East and Africa. This year the figure has already risen to 1,600, but Britain’s response has been to refuse committing to Operation Triton’s rescue operations. Why? A score of unexamined judgements about the worthiness of human life has laid the foundations for the policies of a Europe at war with people. These judgements hail the productive body as a body qualified to enter our borders – the body of the Other, if unable to fit the needs of the British or European workplace, becomes a ‘problem’ as dehumanised as our economy. The life of the refugee is buried under a debate that has lost sight of the sacredness of human life.

The examples don’t stop there. Women are still being discriminated against for not being economically productive during pregnancy, childbirth and childcare. The elderly suffer heavily from inadequate funding due to austerity, with 40% cuts to local councils leaving “hundreds of thousands struggling with basic tasks”. I could go on. Perhaps it is time to begin constructing a new paradigm. Perhaps it is time we perceived the body for what it truly is – life itself; to be honoured, to be respected, to be deeply understood. These themes are worth the kind of real and in depth exploration that goes far beyond the scope of a blog article… And demands a deep and serious commitment to human life.

As I lay in bed with menstrual cramps having called in sick last minute – again – I can’t help but worry. What does my manager think? Are they writing me off as unprofessional? Will this affect my recommendation? I am made to feel guilty for honouring the needs of my temporarily unproductive body. I am angry that my stillness could have negative consequences for myself and my future, and I cannot relax for the stress. But thank God, I think to myself, thank God this pain only lasts a day.